Unhappy Campers

A stickler for City Hall process, Amanda Fritz takes a new tack with Right 2 Dream Too.

UNDER THE BRIDGE: The proposed new home for the Right 2 Dream Too camp, located off Northwest Lovejoy Street under the Broadway Bridge next to Union Station, will have room for up to 100 people. - IMAGE: WW Staff

City Commissioner Amanda Fritz has always demanded that
City Hall follow its own rules. She often railed against ex-Commissioner
Randy Leonard’s backroom maneuvers and held up the City Council over
the tiniest of procedural details.

But
now in her second term, Portland is seeing a new, different approach in
her decision to move the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp from an Old
Town block to city property under the Broadway Bridge.

The move may violate
city code that prohibits camping on city property, provides no
long-term plans for the estimated 100 people who will camp under the
west end of the bridge, and flouts the city’s strategy to combat
homelessness.

Fritz says she cut
the deal to settle a lawsuit against the city brought by the Old Town
landowner. Confidentiality was needed to reach the settlement, she adds.

“I don’t appreciate
public involvement when it really doesn’t matter,” Fritz says. “People
have been angry and say, ‘Even if we don’t want it, you’re still going
to do it.’ Yeah, that’s true.”

But her decision
promises only to create a new homeless camp on city property (Dignity
Village still operates on city land in Northeast Portland), inviting a
new lawsuit.

As reported on
wweek.com, the Pearl District Neighborhood Association plans to sue the
city, citing code that prohibits using city property for camping.

“It’s just
unconscionable,” White says. “It is a direct hit on the regulatory
structure that every other property owner has been forced to go through
by the very city who is exempting itself.”

Fritz says she doesn’t yet know what the city needs to do to make the camp legal.

“We will be
announcing everything every step of the way,” she says. “It was very
unfortunate the owner decided to go to the press before the settlement
was finished because that raised a lot of questions I don’t yet have
answers to.”

The settlement waives
$25,000 in city fines levied against Michael Wright for the current
Right 2 Dream Too camp on his property at Northwest 4th Avenue and West
Burnside Street, the former site of Cindy’s, an adult bookstore.

Fritz
acknowledges her strategy deviates from the city’s long-term plan to
address homelessness. (She also concedes she did not engage Commissioner
Dan Saltzman, who oversees the city’s Housing Bureau, in the
discussions about Right 2 Dream Too.)

And she says it’s not yet clear what will happen to the camp when a one-year stay granted by the city runs out.

“We have all been
very clear that we want most funds to go toward permanent housing,”
Fritz says. “Everyone on the council is committed to that. There are a
finite amount of resources.”

“I’m
not suggesting it’s the right answer, but you can probably think of
worse options,” Rudman says. “We’ll see what happens next. That’s the
fundamental problem: There’s really no end game until we figure out how
to help people.”